A phobia is the fear of an object, place or situation which is so strong that it changes the way a person organises their life. It is more than a strong aversion to something, but is a persistent and irrational fear. If you have a phobia, you may recognise that even though you know the thing is not necessarily dangerous, you still feel terrified of it. If it is debilitating and causing you anxiety, you may want to be rid of it. The NHS currently favours CBT, Psychotherapy or medication, but NLP and Cognitive Hypnotherapy is a very effective and fast treatment. Some people report a vast improvement after one session.
You have probably heard of different ways to get over phobias by using techniques like flooding and desensitising – meaning that you increase your exposure to the thing that you are afraid of, gradually. This can be successful, but relies on the person keeping their cool and not getting too freaked out. A good therapist will ensure that the person is kept feeling safe is and able to reduce the exposure at any time. This can be a good techniques for fear of spiders, or similar phobias, where it can be tested – ie. at first you coudn’t be near a spider, and at the end, you could hold one!
In my experience though, if you are terrified of something the last thing you want to do is to face that thing, up close and personal. Cognitive Hypnotherapy uses a gentler approach, for phobias like this. The mental health charity Mind sites hypnotherapy as an effective treatment. The Phobia Cure is based on NLP techniques and is a very effective brief therapy, so the problem can be ‘fixed’ quickly.
How does it work? The memory or memories from the sensitising event (when the phobia started) have been stored in the brain in a certain way, and by recoding them, you can update your understanding, thus reducing or alleviating the fear and beating the phobia.
Contact me if you would like to find out more about how I can help you to get rid of your phobia, and if you enjoyed this post, feel free to share it with others on Facebook or Twitter.
You can read the article entitled ‘We Beat Our Phobias’ – using NLP from this month’s Top Sante magazine here.
A boat trip in The Mediterranean Sea – a seemingly innocent photo. In fact, a frightening incident here caused the start of a deep-rooted phobia.
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